


As Iron To Iron

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Love, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 02:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla was never a dull knife. Ronon doesn't understand why no-one sees this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Iron To Iron

Ronon knows.

He doesn't understand why no-one else does. Don't they have eyes? Can't they _see_?

Or perhaps they're just seeing what they're used to seeing.

Ronon knows what he's seeing.

He sees the way Sheppard's eyes track to Teyla then flick away. He sees the way Teyla lifts her cheek for Kanaan's greeting kiss but turns her face towards Sheppard as she does so. He wondered that her fingers were so carefully placed as she told him of killing Michael to protect her son and save John; he realised when John joked about his rescue from a hundred-sixty yards of death but did not look away from Teyla as he teased.

"She's with Kanaan, though, isn't she?" Amelia Banks says when he edges around the topic, unsure if the Atlanteans will accept this statement from him, unsure if the Atlanteans will accept his behaviour from Teyla.

Yes, Teyla is 'with' the Athosian man. And yet a woman's children are her own, now and forever, and the arrangement of a marriage can be for parenting her children, if not always for fathering them. Satedan society was accepting of such an arrangement, although he and Melena agreed on exclusion in their marriage. They were for each other and no-one else. Some marriages are arranged like that.

Some are not.

Ronon knows what he is seeing; he suspects Kanaan knows it, too, is accepting of it, if perhaps a little resigned.

"We had a friend when we were young," he says to Ronon one day when they are stretching. It's not the exercise Ronon wants to do, but Kanaan doesn't fight. "Aldevor once said that a foolish man would cut himself to the bone trying to grip a knife-blade in his bare hands."

The Athosian man bends like a reed before the breeze of trouble rather than standing tall and defiant in its path. Something in Ronon admires that ability to bow before fate - to recognise the face of defeat, even as he thinks that it's no life he'd live. He'd fight for his rights, for what he wanted, for what he desired to protect.

Still, Teyla was never a dull knife and Kanaan is no fool.

Sheppard never was, either.

Sateda has a saying: _Iron hones iron, and a fighter does best among her own._

Here, in Atlantis, Teyla is among her own.

Ronon knows.


End file.
